


The Domestic Route

by Grimmy88



Category: Left 4 Dead (Video Games)
Genre: Anal Sex, Anxiety, Bigotry & Prejudice, Coming Untouched, Developing Relationship, Dirty Talk, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Feelings, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Jealousy, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Porn with Feelings, Self-Esteem Issues, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:26:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22911697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grimmy88/pseuds/Grimmy88
Summary: Nick supposes he has choices. He thinks on all the money he’d won and tucked away into his accounts. He thinks he could go withdraw it and be just fine for a while. He thinks on how that would’ve been his choice months and months ago.Now he chooses to follow Ellis.
Relationships: Ellis & Nick (Left 4 Dead), Ellis/Nick (Left 4 Dead)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 137





	The Domestic Route

**Author's Note:**

> So, I had an idea for my own proposal fic. I wanted it to be five pages, and now I'm giving you twenty-seven. I hope you enjoy it regardless of its length!

After they spend months and months in captivity, poked and prodded and tested, they are freed. After the world is cleaned, they’re allowed to go. After the momentum of their lives was upset by infection, after their time was stolen by scientists, they’re pushed out the door. Long after they’d forgotten the rules of the old world, long after they’d been denied their connections to it, they were shoved back out into it.

Long after the doors shut behind them, Nick is unsure where to go.

With a cure manufactured from somewhere—maybe even from their own blood or marrow or any of the other things taken by needle and surgery—they’re allowed to go anywhere. To go back to family or friends or anyone that would be alive and waiting for them.

But the country had been devastated. A good amount of their team has lost parts of their families. Coach has a sibling that made it with some nieces and nephews added in. They tell him to go, and eventually he does, but the doubt of that decision is on his face up until it leaves their sight.

Rochelle had lost her mother, a brother, but she has another two remaining and her father beside. She doesn’t need to be told to go, but she does it with glassy eyes and a promise to find the two who remain. Nick doesn’t believe her, but he knows the sentiment is genuine.

Ellis, heartbroken, has clearly lost two family members upon their teammates’ dispersal. He had no siblings, he’d explained that long ago during their confinement. He’d had cousins, an aunt, and an uncle. Two of them had survived, they were told. It had taken Nick a bit to figure out why the younger man had checked about them first. The long pause and deeply etched fear and yearning and sorrow before the mechanic had dared to ask the administrator another question had given Nick his answer.

After the hick was done he’d broken down in the hallway, shoulder sliding down the wall until he was squatting. He’d tucked his head down between his knees, weaved his fingers together at the back of his neck, and he’d shaken with relief and mourning and exhaustion as the sobs choked their way out of him. They’d been ugly and gasping sounds because he’d been trying to suck them back and bury them within his chest.

Nick had thought there’d never been a better time to cry, so he’d slid down the wall and sat next to the bassist with a heavy, grounding hand on his back.

As for him, he’d gone alone to ask. He hadn’t cared about his biological mother—he hadn’t seen her since he was six, but they’d informed him of her missing status anyway. At this point, that meant she’d died and her body had long since disappeared or been blown apart or eaten. There’d been part of him that hurt thinking that, but most of him knew he’d never have gotten catharsis from her anyway, so he’d moved on to the most important question.

They’d denied him it. He’d had no way to prove his relation to his stepmother, the woman who’d raised him, the woman who’d tried to fix a family only to wear herself down and raw. She’d done it for him. _She’d_ been his mother but because they didn’t share blood or a last name and he had no papers saying otherwise, they wouldn’t tell him a thing.

They’d only tell him about his father who’d put a bullet in his own head rather than face a gory, unavoidable death. The easy way out definitely sounded like his M.O.

And then they’d enraged him further by telling him that his ex-wife had asked after him and had been notified of his survival. He’d wanted to rip the guy’s head off, but they had guns and he didn’t, so he’d knocked over a chair on his exit and fumed at not being able to do more about it.

How fair was it that a woman who’d shared his last name for a measly three years could find her answers, but he couldn’t about the woman who mattered?

Ellis had asked after him once he’d returned to their room, and for one reason or another, the conman had told him everything. Nick had felt the pricks behind his eyes, but they remained there because he’d been too drained and distraught to do more than sit on the younger man’s bed and stare at the floor.

The hick had been quick to sit beside him, their thighs together, his callused hand returning the favor from the day before.

So now, standing there together, staring at the transport ready to take them wherever they wanted to go, Nick realizes that all he has is what he found in that confinement: Ellis.

Ellis realizes it, too. Maybe he realized it long ago. He handles it much better than the older man who could feel the anxiety rising through his body to gather at the bottom of his throat.

“Come home with me,” Ellis says, voice tentative and hopeful, brows curled pleadingly.

Nick supposes he has choices. He thinks on all the money he’d won and tucked away into his accounts. He thinks he could go withdraw it and be just fine for a while. He thinks on how that would’ve been his choice months and months ago.

Now he chooses to follow Ellis.

Ellis’ mother welcomes them into her home like she’d been expecting her boy to come home with company. She doesn’t care that her son comes home with someone twelve years his senior. She doesn’t care that he comes home with a man. She just cares that he is home and their reunion is something the conman doesn’t interrupt. He just stands on their front lawn and watches mother and son embrace.

He thinks at one time he would have been envious or spiteful, but his chest feels heavy with something else, something like relief, that works its way up onto his features. For once, he can’t school them before the duo part and turn to him. He wonders if Ellis notices from this distance or can even discern his features with how red his eyes are, but it doesn’t really matter when he holds out his hand for Nick.

He goes as beckoned, glancing between the two before stepping up to their level. He is surprised when Ellis’ hand folds around his own and is even more surprised when he doesn’t pull away. He wants to, feels the urge to do just that, but he doesn’t and is rewarded with a gentle squeeze to his fingers.

“Ma, this is Nick,” the mechanic says, voice tremulous and low.

She’s plump, but she looks like her son with the same curving eyes, sharp cheekbones, and full lips. He knows that Ellis’ father up and left them, so he can appreciate that he’d gotten some of his best features from the person who matters.

“Nick,” Ellis continues, “this is my ma, Annalyn.”

He doesn’t comment on the obviously southern name, just puts his free hand out to her and watches the way she looks beyond it to his other one. And that’s it, then she’s pushing passed the offering to put her arms around him.

Flabbergasted is the only word that comes to mind. Ellis releases his hand and he guesses that means he’s supposed to use that arm to return the embrace. He does, and though he knows how rigid he must feel, she just clings all the tighter. After a few uncomfortable seconds she leans back and takes up his hands herself.

“Thank you for takin’ care’uv my son,” she says, though it doesn’t seem like it conveys what she actually wants to say.

He wants to pull back and shrug her off, but he can feel Ellis’ eyes on his profile and the weight of them burrows deeper than his skin. He does shrug, but not to dispel her touch. “I think he was taking care of us more than anything else.”

“No way,” Ellis denies, voice and mood lifting. “All the specials wanted’ta gut me, ma, but Nick’s a damn fine shot. Wouldn’t be in one piece without’im.”

“Maybe give her a few minutes before talking about how close you came to dying,” Nick suggests.

The older woman laughs, it’s wet but her expression is clearing. She gives his hands a squeeze of her own and steps back. Then she looks between them and asks the question: “The two’a you are…?”

“Yeah,” Ellis answers for them. They hadn’t labeled themselves when they’d been quarantined away from the world. They’d acted on what Nick had felt building between them while they’d been fighting for their lives. They’d liked it, they’d continued it, and then it had gone beyond what the gambler could’ve predicted. At the start, he never would’ve put money on him standing in the doorway of the southerner’s childhood home, meeting his mother, and apparently getting her approval as she smiles, as she _accepts_ it, as she takes him in like she was expecting him personally.

For all the jokes they’d cracked and for all the confidence they’d exuded when they’d been fighting towards the military, the memories of bloody, gray infected faces were hard to shake. The worst were the flashes of phantom pain caused by invisible claws slicing their skin, of fiery liquid burning their feet, of goo blinding their eyes, of being pulled this way and that, of being pummeled into the ground, of screaming and grunting, of sobbing and crying, of running with their hearts in their throats and terror in their guts.

He knows Ellis feels it, too. He catches him staring off through windows all too often. He catches him checking all the dark corners of the house before going to bed. He catches him with his face in his hands and hates when he jerks them away and puts on a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

The dreams are the worst of it. There are times he dreams of things that happened to them, attacks and obstacles alike. Those he wakens from with the adrenaline choking him, coursing through his veins, and drowning his mind in the past. Only the present weight of Ellis on his chest keeps him from bucking and swinging and fighting.

The smaller man’s childhood bed is a double, but they always have to lie tangled within one another. Normally Nick’s chest acts as a pillow, unless Ellis wants to be spooned.

Nick prefers that. He prefers being behind the other survivor so that when he wakes, disoriented and lost, he can move away without waking his partner. Sometimes he gets lucky like that. Sometimes he can sit on the edge of the bed, back hunched and head low, and he can regain his bearings. He can calm himself down and then let the smell of Ellis’ hair do the rest from where he buries his nose in it.

More often than not he doesn’t get away with it. He hates those nights almost as much as he relishes the way Ellis follows him in sitting up. In the way he rests his head against Nick’s back and lets his hands wander and soothe.

The nightmares that shake him most aren’t the memories. They’re the deep fears he’s never spoken, the ones that flash in his mind, the ones he slams his eyes against and wills away, the ones he refuses to acknowledge after. Though his refusal doesn’t mean he forgets the imagery of them, nor does it mean they don’t reoccur again and again.

And again and again he wakes believing Ellis’ blood is staining his skin.

Somehow there is something worse than his own issues. Something that makes him feel more useless than he’d ever felt at the bottom of a bottle or bleeding in a back alley. That’s because there’s nothing he can do to stop his lover’s nightmares from waking him, sweaty and gasping and grasping.

He’s not like Nick who tries to bury his fears and stand atop them so only he can feel how uneven the ground is. No, the mechanic has lived a life of affection and easy trust, which is beyond evident now that the conman has met his mother. And who is he to criticize that? Who would he be to push him away when his arms are searching in the night?

For the first time in his life, he doesn’t want to find out. For the first time he lets someone have him like that—as a physical and mental reassurance, tucked tightly beneath his chin and within his arms. For the first time he wishes he could be more than he is, because as he is, there’s nothing he can do to take away his partner’s anguish.

He doesn’t say that to Ellis, but it seems like the younger man can sense his dilemma anyway because after each fit he gives a thankful smile that crinkles his eyes and it’s all because Nick sweeps the sweaty curls from his forehead. But that’s nothing. That’s easy. That’s effortless. He’d always thought things like this were supposed to be hard. He remembered when they had been. He wonders why it’s different now.

The redneck’s mother wasn’t the only person from his life to have survived, just his closest. Turns out he hadn’t been wrong about his friends catching the evac in time to be some of the first people out of Savannah. One morning, not too long after they’ve settled in, Annalyn tells her son as much. She’d escaped the city alone, having been out of the house when the worst of it hit. When they’d taken her to one of the cruise ships she’d looked everywhere for Ellis, having thought the worst when his name wasn’t on any of the lists. The names she did find were his best friends: Keith and Dave.

They’d been on a different boat, but she tells them that she’d seen Dave’s father at one of the stores recently, so she assumes that both young men had returned to the city. Ellis rushes upstairs immediately to get the cell phone that they had gone out and bought a few days ago to replace the one he’d lost.

The cell towers seemed to be one of the first things fixed so that the population could check on their loved ones. The internet was something else they were looking into, but they all agreed that it could wait. At the very least they had television, even if most of the channels were currently news stations.

He must make the calls upstairs, because he’s gone for several minutes. When he walks down, Nick turns to him and finds him changed into pants and a shirt instead of his pajamas.

“Suppose that means they’re comin’ over?” Annalyn questions.

“Yeah!” Ellis grins and pulls Nick up from his seat at the table. The gambler snags his coffee and lets himself be led to the front door. “Can’t wait fer’y’ta meet’em, Nick. They’re awesome. I mean, I know I toldjya some stories, but just wait. Man, they’re gonna think yer hilarious.”

Nick isn’t sure what to make of that, so he doesn’t respond. He just stands on the front porch with mother and son, sipping his bitter drink. He wishes he could go back inside—this isn’t his moment. He doesn’t need to be here to get in the way, it was the same reason he’d held back upon meeting Annalyn.

And, truth be told, he’s not sure he wants to meet the guys. They’d gotten really fucking lucky that his mother had been so accepting. He isn’t going to hold his breath that all southerners were going to give them the same break. Apocalypse or not, it’s not as if people can just shrug off the mantle of their upbringing, no matter who they might hurt if they don’t.

That thought beckons in the anxiety to build and hum through his chest, vibrating right under his sternum. He hasn’t felt this much anxiety since before the infection hit, but that was different to this. That was the worry of getting money into the right hands before a bullet got put into his head. This anxiety is… not for himself.

The realization hits him in several ways and each and every one makes his body lock up. Even as he sees a truck screech to a stop in front of the house—the people inside barely putting it into fucking park before jumping out—it’s like he’s watching it from afar, the dissociation settled so heavily over and within him that he can only breathe and feel his anxiety change shape and morph into _dread_.

“You son’uv’a bitch!” One of the men yells as he rushes over. He’s got the lightest hair of their little gathered group, maybe an auburn color, but it’s hard to tell under his hat. A blue hat, identical to the one Ellis had been wearing throughout their zombie odyssey. If that isn’t a dead giveaway that this is the infamous Keith, the silvery-pink scars all over the exposed skin of his legs, arms, and even his face would be. He stands practically a head taller than Ellis and crashes into him bodily, wrapping him up with a crushing grip that he doesn’t want to relinquish anytime soon.

Ellis holds him back just as tightly.

The second man manages to shut his door behind him. He’s got dark hair, on the verge of being black, thick and shiny. He doesn’t have nearly as many scars as far as the conman can see.

Keith ends up drawing their third friend in so they can press their foreheads together. They try to talk between relieved laughter all huddled together but end up just repeating how glad they are to see one another. When they break away, Dave, because he can be no one else, hugs Ellis and they grip tight unlike any embrace they’ve most likely given each other before.

Nick can feel Annalyn’s blue gaze on the side of his face. He manages to break his stupor enough to turn his head to meet it. She takes his coffee mug and sets it aside, offers up a smile, and, just like her intuitive son might, scoops up his hand. He fights to let it be held, half of him feeling like he’s being chastised, the other half _grateful_.

They stand together and it feels as if an entire conversation passes between just their hands and eyes alone while a real, boisterous one takes place on the lawn before them.

He has to let her go when two thirds of the trio spot her and call her name. She goes down with her arms open, letting one and then the other kiss her cheek and hug her tight. Nick tries not to resent them for it, after all they’ve known her their whole lives. He’s only known her a couple weeks.

They ask her questions, tell her how happy they are to see her, and then that’s it. Then all four of them are turning to Nick.

He wants to run.

Ellis’ eyebrows are curved in happiness and hope, so that’s enough of a reason as to why he doesn’t.

The hick slips by his friends to beckon Nick down to their level, and the northerner goes. He isn’t offended when his lover doesn’t take his hand, but he is surprised when he stands close enough that their arms touch.

“Nick,” he starts, “this is Keith an’ Dave.”

Dave’s closest so Nick offers his hand in that direction first. “Good to meet you,” he lies.

Up close he can see that the tallest of the trio is fairly attractive. It’s something he’s got to work at, Nick can tell, something that isn’t effortless like Ellis’ brand of beauty, but his dark eyes and hair are nice to look at. His handshake is firm and voice nothing remarkable.

“You, too.”

Even before he offers his hand, he knows Keith is going to be the problem. His brown eyes are looking Nick over as if he were still stuck in his gore-stained white suit. Then there’s an awkward pause that everyone notices before he _finally_ presses his palm against the older man’s. He squeezes too hard and Nick takes it as the warning it’s meant to be.

“Nice to meet you,” he lies again anyway, for Ellis.

Ellis invites them to stay for dinner and they take him up on the offer, situating themselves in the house in a way that indicates that they’d spent many afternoons and summer days within its walls. Nick feels out of place for most of it, but Annalyn takes pity on him, opting to remain by his side and ask for his help before anyone else’s. For the best, he figures, since the three have more than enough zombie stories to swap.

During Ellis’ turn, though, he makes sure Nick is nearby so they can recollect together all the ‘awesome shit’ they’d done to survive. Dave nods along whenever the gambler adds something, but Keith focuses only on his fellow mechanic. The northerner doesn’t mind it so much, but he can see the way Ellis’ forehead creases. He can _see_ how tense his shoulders are becoming.

He wants to rub it away. There’s no need for him to feel defensive or protective or whatever. This is about Ellis and his friends, not Nick. They never have to see Nick again if they don’t want. He knows how to make himself scarce.

Eventually, he offers to go get another round of beers. It lets him take a few moments to clear his head, because he knows he has to be halfway to crazy for sitting this long talking to a bunch of rednecks about the finer art of hacking zombies apart with a chainsaw versus a good old fashioned axe. He doesn’t remember sitting this long and listening to his ex-wife’s family, for fuck’s sake.

That thought nearly causes him to drop one of the bottles. He catches it and forces himself to return to his lover’s side.

He stops, though, just outside the living room, separated from the trio by a wall. They haven’t heard him, thanks to his cushioned feet, and so they think it’s safe to talk freely. Nick leans his weight against the paint job and lets them.

“So…” Dave drawls. He’s sitting in one of the chairs not too far from Keith, directly across from where Nick and Ellis had been occupying the couch, thighs pressed together though there’d been plenty of space. “Nick’s yer…”

“Yeah,” Ellis says, swallowing down a sip of beer audibly. “Toldjya as much on the phone.”

“Was hopin’ y’were fuckin’ with us,” Keith said immediately.

That awkward silence befell them again, so palpable the wall did nothing in keeping it from settling over Nick, as well.

He’d spent some hours with these men, but he’d kept his eyes from them, so he couldn’t conjure their body language or mannerisms in his mind for this moment. He could, however, see Ellis as plain as day in his mind’s eye. He’d be hunched a bit, both hands on his beer bottle, head tilted down as if he had that hat to hide behind while he thought.

But when he spoke again? When he spoke again Nick could hear his back straighten out. Could hear his chin lift. Could hear the challenge in his eyes.

“This ain’t nothin’ new,” he explains. “I’ve always been like this, just didn’t tell y’all.”

He hears Dave suck in a breath to respond, but Keith’s scoff cuts, jagged and tearing, right through it.

“No, y’ain’t always been like this. That ain’t the Ellis we grew up with.”

“Yeah, it _is_.”

“Then how come y’ain’t ever tell me before? How come I gotta find out with some old guy sittin’ on a couch next’a ya?”

Dave sighed. “Probably ‘cause’a how yer actin’ right now.”

“Don’t seem wrong’ta ya?” Nick winces at the word even as Keith continues. “Don’t seem _real_ fuckin’ wrong that suddenly there’s some queer asshole sittin’ here, all up on our friend? So, what? He just turnedjya?”

He wants to go back in and punch the fucker in the mouth just as much as he wants to go outside and smoke a whole pack of cigarettes to calm down. He’d stupidly promised he’d stop the latter (“Zombies didn’t kill ya, butchyer gonna let cancer do it?”) and he doesn’t think the former would be appreciated. He just tightens his grips on the drinks and steels himself. It’s Ellis’ moment and he’s not going to take it away from him just to make it all worse.

“Nobody turned me,” Ellis tells him, voice low. “I ain’t any different than before. I’m just the same.”

Keith scoffs again, though it’s less of a snarl this time.

After a few beats, Dave chimes in: “So, you’ve always liked guys?”

“I like both,” his mechanic says. “I’m bi… that’s why I never needed’ta tell y’all before, ‘cause I never met a guy that…” Without having to see, he knows those shoulders are shrugging. “Nick’s awesome, y’just gotta give’im a chance.”

“He ain’t awesome—he’s _weird_ ,” Keith argues, and the word is so juvenile it almost makes the conman laugh. “Don’t like how he stares atchya.”

“I mean, I hate’ta break it t’ya but, we’re datin’ an’ part of it’s ‘cause he likes my face.”

Dave laughs, sharp and loud. He quiets quickly, though, and maybe that’s because of a glare he’s given. Either way, it’s a good sign. It’s even better when he speaks again: “Okay,” he says. “Okay. He seems cool.”

Ellis exhales and the grin he’s sporting is audible in his response. “He is. He’s got some awesome stories from before the apocalypse, Dave. You’ll get’a kick outta ‘em.”

“That’s it?” Keith demands. “That’s it, yer cool now, Dave?”

“Man, stop bein’ a jackass. This ain’t hard for anybody but Ellis an’ yer juss makin’ it worse. He’s our best friend an’ he’s right—nothin’s changed.”

“It _is_ hard,” the scarred man admits, quieter now. “You’ve always been a fag an’ I used’ta make fun’uv ‘em all the time. Right’ta yer face.”

Well, that explains some things. No man likes to be told they were wrong in the past. No man wants to have to look inward and face themselves. But, for some reason, he’s finding it’s a bit easier for people when it’s _for_ Ellis.

“That’s okay, man,” Ellis promises. “It’s how it is down here, I get it. We’kin work on it… like, maybe not callin’ me’a fag?”

“I didn’t mean—…” Keith makes a half-aborted groan sound. “It ain’t gonna be easy for me, Ellis. I ain’t like Dave… S’gonna take some time, man.”

“Okay?”

“I ain’t sayin’ we ain’t friends. I ain’t goin’ anywhere, I juss… I’m gonna fuck up, a lot.”

The smile was back in his lover’s voice. “Thass okay. We’ve all been through worse’n this, right?”

“T’be fair,” Dave says gently, “the worse part’a this is that he’s datin’ a yankee.”

He listens to them laugh and doesn’t start as a hand settles in the small of his back. Nick had felt Annalyn’s presence so he takes what comfort he can from the brief touch and then, after enough believable time passes, follows the plump woman back into the living room to dole out the beers. Nick doesn’t stay, says he needs some air, which is the truth. Ellis offers to join him, but both he and Annalyn tell the young man to stay with his friends. She’s the one who accompanies him outside.

There they stand together and watch nothing at all.

After a bit, she says: “You’re good for’im.”

Nick scoffs because he can’t help it. It’s the other way around and they both know it. Still, he has to ask why.

“Because I’kin see how hard you’re tryin’.”

He clenches his jaw shut at that, entirely unaccustomed to praise that isn’t centered around his skill with cons, cards, or guns. She doesn’t push him to respond, just keeps standing there until he finishes his beer and feels like he can go back inside.

After months, Nick starts to feel cramped in the southerner’s childhood home. As much as he’s come to like Annalyn, and as oddly comfortable as he’s become around her, there are times when he yearns for it to just be him and Ellis. A year ago, he thinks, he would’ve yearned for it to just be him.

Now, he wants to have a shower big enough to fit the two of them. He wants a king-sized bed in a big bedroom. He wants the walls to be thick. He wants nobody else to be on the other side of them. He wants their own space where they can talk or fuck as loud or quiet as they want.

He mentions it when Ellis joins him in bed and laughs when the younger man bounds up from his chest with wide eyes.

“Y’wanna get our own place?”

“Yes.”

“Like, our own apartment?”

“Unless you want a house.”

“A _house_?!”

“Whatever you want, we’ll figure it out.”

“Y’wanna move in with me?”

“I’m already moved in with you, Overalls.”

“No, I mean,” Ellis stammers a bit and then motions his hand through the air. “Y’ _still_ wanna live with me?”

“Would I have asked, otherwise?”

“…Can we stay in Savannah?”

Nick thinks on it and, miraculously, finds he doesn’t care. What does he have up north anymore? “Sure.”

“Nick,” Ellis says, his voice dropping low and eyes darkening. He grins, something half-playful and half-predatory, and lifts one of his legs over the conman so he can perch above him. The bigger man takes advantage by grabbing those narrow hips he enjoys so much. “You’re serious?”

“Ellis,” he mimics, levity ruining the tone. He smirks because he can’t stop it in the face of the bright smile above him. “I’m serious.” He trails his hands back and squeezes his lover’s ass. “It’ll be nice to actually _hear_ you scream when I fuck you.”

Thing is Ellis doesn’t exactly scream during sex. He makes these little panting noises, eyes squinted when they aren’t darting around as if he can’t believe all the things he’s feeling. Nick likes to hover above him to watch this happen, likes to have a pillow propped up under his hips so he can thrust down into him as they face each other. He likes the feel of the younger man’s calluses sliding up and down his arms, across his shoulders, curling into his muscles. He likes the way Ellis’ ankles hook behind his legs, likes it more when thighs tighten around him and feet lock in the small of his back.

He likes when his lover wants him as close as possible, as if his cock inside him somehow isn’t enough.

Tonight, he likes it all the more when Ellis curls his fingers in the back of his hair and pulls his mouth from staining his neck. Nick retaliates with a hard thrust, one that makes his mechanic moan, makes his back arch as if offering up that skin instead. The conman sets upon it, sucks and tongues the smaller man’s nipples until the body beneath him is shuddering. He’s a little more pliant when the tug comes to his hair and forces him to withdraw this time.

He goes as Ellis guides him, swaps places so his back is against the mattress. Their king-sized bed, situated in the middle of _their_ room, within _their_ home. He roves his touch over the southerner’s skin, excited and eager when strong legs bracket his hips. His lover reaches behind him and with two fingers slips Nick’s dick back inside his ass where it belongs. From there he puts his hands on the older man’s chest and starts rocking.

Nick likes when the other man takes charge. He likes when he lets his wants and desires and pleasure be known and shown and told. He tells Ellis as much through praise and the reverent way he rubs his body as it undulates above him. It’s hard to worship the toned lines as they should be with the mechanic touching him just as eagerly, so he pushes him back, takes his wrists and directs his palms to anchor on the gambler’s thighs behind him.

This pulls Ellis’ stomach tight and taut, this lets his erection tap up against his belly with each movement, this lets Nick see the flushed skin from chest upwards. This lets him look into those blue, blue eyes as they chase orgasm together.

The hips above him roll and rock, lift and drop, and Nick squeezes them to keep himself in control. He loves seeing Ellis like this, finally free of all those inhibitions he’d had at the start of their relationship. He loves seeing Ellis flip his head back, groan at the ceiling, unconsciously slide a hand down his own front, so slow and sexy, to pinch the base of his cock and stop himself from coming too soon.

Nick knows he can make the younger man spill again, but he shows restraint and doesn’t plant his feet into the mattress so he can pound upwards against his prostate. He lets Ellis keep holding himself so that he can grind back and forth, letting the bigger man’s dick feel every slick crevice of his inner walls, letting the wet suction break the quiet of the night, letting him watch it all happen.

The conman loves how he knows just where to angle to get the loudest, sharpest, filthiest reactions from the bassist. He loves when Ellis is too far gone to stop them from spilling out of his mouth, when his lips hang open, eyes shut tight, brows creased down, like he can’t believe how much—how _good_ —he’s feeling. As if he’s wondering how he’s still alive with so much stimulation surging through his body.

That expression does it for Nick. He can feel the molten pressure building in his gut and balls and dick. He’s quick to pull Ellis’ fingers away from his cock, quick to start grinding up and hard and fast against his prostate because there’s a possessive need inside of him tonight to get his hick off that way and only that way.

“Gonna cum, baby?” He asks, because he knows his lover likes to hear his voice, likes to be asked and guided.

“Yeah,” Ellis whispers, which is more than he can usually manage. That makes Nick’s balls draw up tight.

“Want you to cum all over me without touching yourself, you hear me?”

“Yeah,” he answers, half-moan and half-breath. “ _Nick_.”

“Good boy,” Nick praises when he feels those thighs start to tremble and contract. When he feels Ellis tighten above and from the inside. “Yeah, come on.” He puts his feet onto the bed so he can give little jabbing thrusts, barely pulling out to do it.

It makes his lover cry out, makes him hunch forward and grab the bigger man’s forearms for leverage as Nick fucks the cum out of him.

Ellis gives overwhelmed, broken little moans at each spurt. His eyes are slits, trained on the way the white of his release falls on the skin and hair below it. When his hole spasms and tightens for the last time, the northerner can’t hold back anymore, either.

“Fuck, Ellis,” he grunts, forcing him to move his hips again. Ellis takes over, somehow finding the stamina even in his afterglow to roll and undulate in a circle to get the other man off. “Yes… good boy. Gonna cum in you, Ellis.”

The mechanic coaxes it out of him, bouncing up and down, tightening his own inner muscles to milk it all as Nick groans and shakes beneath him.

When his hips lower, when his eyes close, when all he feels moving is the rise and fall of his chest and his hands massaging the sides of his lover’s thighs, Ellis leans over him and kisses his brow. He traces the caresses down, against the bridge of Nick’s nose until their mouths can touch. Then he continues downward, along the older man’s neck where his tongue slips out to swipe away the first line of his own cum.

Nick loves this too—loves how comfortable Ellis has become in his sexuality, in his own body, in understanding just how erotic he can be.

He puts one of his hands into the hick’s curls and strokes them as that tongue laps at him. He pulls off Nick’s softening dick so he can duck down and get at the lowest globs of semen staining his skin. When he finishes, he looks up to meet the gambler’s eyes and smiles just before he’s pulled up into a kiss.

Nick presses his tongue in, licks him thoroughly clean in an attempt to chase the taste of cum.

From there the kisses slow and soften, and before long Ellis is grinning and laughing into his mouth. He tries to sink down into Nick’s side, but the bigger man is already getting up to fetch something to wipe the mess from their bodies.

“We got tissues,” his lover says, mouth swollen and almost pouting.

“I’m not waking up with you glued to me,” Nick admonishes. He smacks Ellis’ ass as he rises, ducks away on shaky legs from the hand that tries to return the strike.

When he’s done cleaning them, he’s pulled down onto his side, made to face Ellis straight on so they can stare at each other through the shadows in their room. Fingers come up to rub through his stubble. Nick watches the other man’s eyes track the movement, watches him watch as it goes lower. Watches blue eyes watch _him_.

He tries to think on anyone but Ellis who had ever touched him like this. He tries to think on _anybody_ he’s been with like this. He tries to think about why this is working, with another man touching him so gently and reverently. Why he’s just as turned on as the first time they’d fallen into each other. Why he’s comfortable throwing an arm over broad shoulders while they watch tv. Why he doesn’t mind when his lover has finished his exploration and _snuggles_ into him to sleep so tightly together.

Why, after two years, this is still easy and nice and uncomplicated.

There are several things Nick gives up for Ellis, though he doesn’t realize them until long after they’ve been gone. He doesn’t miss any of them. They’re effortless things he could’ve given up anytime anyway, like nicotine and travelling across the country to gamble. He still gets to gamble anyway when the casino boats pop back up, but for once, he’s careful about it. He limits himself and doesn’t blow all the money or become indebted to the wrong people. And some of that might be because he no longer thinks of it as just _his_ money.

That one really throws him for a loop.

The winnings he’d had before the apocalypse (and the fact that he hadn’t needed to use _any_ of them to pay off all his employers because none of the fuckers had survived) were enough to get them a house, Ranch-style since they didn’t need anything bigger. It was part of Savannah’s big building project to get people back into the city so it hadn’t cost them nearly as much as it would have before the world had almost ended. The other payments they cover with Ellis’ business.

The bassist been left feeling listless, _useless_ , and Nick hadn’t wanted to hear that bullshit. There were plenty of people driving again, plenty of cars with issues and not plenty of mechanics to help out. So, one night he’d suggested they take out a loan to help build up the hick’s own shop again, to help _run_ it, to let him once again do what he’d always enjoyed doing.

“I love you,” Ellis had blurted before even accepting.

Nick had been too surprised to respond, but luckily the younger man had hugged him tight and thanked him a million times so he hadn’t needed to.

So, one of the other things he gives up for Ellis is his free time. Nick doesn’t trust that there’s even a bit of mathematical knowledge between his lover and his two idiot friends, so he takes up managing their finances for them. That expands to placing shipments and then setting prices until he’s practically running the place for them.

That’s all fine. It just means he and Ellis take home all the more money for it because business is booming and constant. Honestly, it’s almost like he’s winning big all the time for how badly everyone in the city wants to get things back to normal. Ultimately, they don’t really have to worry about their house payments or bills and it’s all so _easy_.

One of the things he _tries_ to give up is his pride. He fails miserably at it, evidenced by the night, not too long after his lover had come out to his friends, that the conman and Keith had gotten into a brawl that Ellis had to physically break up.

He hadn’t talked to either of them for two days and that had been fucking hell considering he still had to sleep in the same bed as the angry man.

In the end, Nick had been the one to offer the olive branch. Keith had, of course, only accepted because of Ellis. But he was the common denominator they could build off, and so they did. When his and his boyfriend’s time together hits the three year mark, he almost considers them civil.

Still doesn’t stop him from giving the accident-prone man shit whenever he sees him, which is often considering he’s technically Nick’s employee and he and Dave love crashing at their place when the garage is closed.

One weekend, he’s actually glad to have them and Annalyn over for an impromptu barbeque. They help distract Ellis from the conman’s constantly vibrating cell phone. He doesn’t recognize the number. Doesn’t want to hope about who it may or may not be. He’s tempted to block the caller, but he’s somehow more tempted to answer—to sate his curiosity and his stupid, blind hope that it may be _her_.

The hope _is_ stupid, and so is he because when he answers it’s the wrong _her_.

He stands up abruptly, his chair scraping across the patio. He hangs up instinctively because he can’t keep his face neutral at the sound of her voice and because he doesn’t want to do this in front of Ellis or his mother.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I gotta take this.”

“Y’okay?” Ellis asks. “Want me’ta come in with ya?”

Nick puts a hand on his shoulder and urges him back down into his seat. He gives the muscle a squeeze and affects the easy confidence and placating smile that’s gotten him out of so many things in his past. “I got it. Keep drinking.”

“Okay. Want anythin’ new on your burger?”

He shakes his head even as he hits the callback and quickly slips inside. By the time he’s in the privacy of one of their guest rooms, the one furthest from the backyard, the call connects.

“Nicolas,” she says.

“How’d you get this number and why in the hell are you calling me?”

“We had the same last name, once. I asked and they gave it to me.” He didn’t need her to specify who _they_ were. “You didn’t answer any of my e-mails, what was I supposed to do?”

“Take the hint and leave me the fuck alone.”

His ex-wife sighs directly into the goddamn receiver and he feels the annoyance shiver up his neck. “I’m glad to know you’re alive, too.”

“Bullshit,” he dismisses, “if that’s what this was about you would’ve called two years ago. Just tell me what you want.”

When she speaks again, she does it in that fake voice he’d fallen for all those years ago. Now it makes something in his stomach curdle. “I need help.”

“Why the hell would I help _you_?”

“I wouldn’t ask if this was just about me. I need help for Lucas.”

Nick can’t stop the bitter huff that escapes him. “Lucas. You mean the kid that _isn’t_ mine?” He shakes his head at her nerve. “I take it his father didn’t make it, huh? Did you end up marrying him?”

“…Yes.”

He feels his rage starting to boil. “And now you’re calling me. Lemme guess: you blew through his life insurance?” She doesn’t answer and he feels his lips curl in an ugly bastardization of a smile. “What, Amy? Can’t call any of the other seventeen guys you were cheating on me with?”

“Fuck you, Nick.”

He laughs. “None of them made it, huh?”

“Why am I not surprised you’re still the same asshole I divorced?” He wants to laugh again for how wrong she is on both accounts.

“Oh, sweetheart. Don’t make it sound like you weren’t begging me to stay.”

“I’m not stupid. Only good thing about you was your money.”

He runs his tongue over his teeth to steady himself. “You know, I almost wish I had some kind of connection to the kid just to get him the fuck away from you. Nobody deserves you as their mother.”

He hears her sharp intake of breath, can almost sense the way she wants to hang up and throw the phone through a wall like the fiery little bitch she is. He used to like that about her. Then he’d learned a lot of guys had liked that about her.

“Worse would be you as his father,” she retorts. It doesn’t bother him like she wants, and she knew it wouldn’t before the words even left her mouth. “Now let _me_ guess: you’re still the same selfish, vain asshole who cares more about gambling and drinking than anything else. How many women have you gotten with far too fast because you don’t know how to do it any other way? Bet they all ended the same as me.”

He stares at the wall, the one he and Ellis had painted with their own hands. “No women and we just passed the three-year mark so I’m not about to funnel you money and fuck things up.”

“Three years,” she echoes, trying so hard to sound unimpressed. “That’s about when I started getting bored and it all went to shit with us, right? Can’t wait for history to repeat itself.”

And that…well, _that_ pisses him off. It pisses him off because it’s something he’s wondered himself. It pisses him off because the last thing he wants is to compare Ellis to his ex-wife. It pisses him off because there could be truth to it.

“Are we done?” he asks tightly. “Good luck with the kid, he’s gonna need it being raised by you.”

He can hear her breathing over the phone for several long seconds before she senses the battle completely lost and unsalvageable. She hangs up without another word. He lets the phone plop into his lap so he can pinch the bridge of his nose between his fingers and will his fury away.

There’s a soft rapping of knuckles on the doorframe.

“Burger’s done,” Ellis tells him. When Nick looks up at him, the easy smile on his face falls away. “…Aw, hell. Knew I should’a come in with ya.”

“I look that bad?” Nick asks as his partner crosses to kneel in front of him.

Ellis gives him one of his many looks and puts a hand on his knee. “What’s’a matter?”

“It’s nothing,” he tries, but he just gets another look for it. This one is the ‘cut the bullshit’ look. He smiles despite himself and cants his head at the empty space on the bed beside him.

The southerner sits as close as he always does. “Who was it?”

Nick sighs and rolls his neck. “My ex-wife.”

“Oh… Didn’t know y’were still in touch with’er.”

“I’m not,” the conman promises, meeting his lover’s eyes. He puts his hand on Ellis’ thigh and squeezes. “I would’ve told you if I was.” Because that’s what you were supposed to do, right?

His mechanic gives a small smile and puts his hand atop Nick’s.

“She kept e-mailing me, but I blocked her. Guess when I didn’t answer she got fed up and found my number somehow.”

“What’d she want?”

“She tried to use Lucas to guilt me into giving her money.”

“Lucas?” the hick parrots. “Y’mean the kid she lied t’y’about? The one the nurse had’ta tell ya wasn’t yers?”

“That’s the one.”

“Wow… that’s pretty shitty.”

“She’s a pretty shitty person.”

Ellis squeezes his fingers. “…Did she say somethin’ else? Y’were pretty down when I came in.”

“Nah, her voice is enough to drive me up the wall.”

“How come y’answered if y’didn’t know the number? I mean, y’knew she was lookin’ inta whether y’were alive or not while we were in that camp.”

It’s a good question, and it’s one he’s going to be honest about. “I was hoping it was Diana.”

Ellis leans hard into him and doesn’t ask anything further. It’s for the best. He doesn’t want to have to recall the entire phone call for him. He can’t repeat the bitch’s words. He can’t let him know how deep they’d cut. He can’t let him know how much he fears they might be right. He can’t let him know about that insecurity. He can’t let him think he doubts Ellis, because he doesn’t. The only person he doubts is himself.

The things Amy had come to hate about him are things he still can’t help. He’s vain and selfish. He thinks he’s gotten better, but he can’t always stop his mood swings and he can be a downright bastard during them. It’s come to the point where he sequesters himself in one of the extra rooms just to avoid snapping at anyone.

The worst is how jealous he could get. It’s a trait he’s always possessed and he feels it so often now when he and Ellis go out. It’s not his lover’s fault he’s young and beautiful as a classical statue, nor is it his fault people stare and try to hit on him. Not once has he ever welcomed any of the advances. No, for how much everyone always stares at the southerner, his blue eyes are always on Nick.

And that makes him feel like shit, too. Ellis is twenty-six and gorgeous. He should be out dating all the people he can, the people who aren’t almost thirty-eight and bogged down by the bullshit he has going on in his head.

But, then again, he _is_ selfish and more than anything he wants to keep what he has.

He’s tired of thinking at that moment, though. He’s tired of doing anything but being with his partner and the people who make the young survivor happy. He leans forward and kisses his temple. “C’mon, we got people waiting and I’m starving.”

“Let’s hope Keith didn’t put none’a that Carolina Reaper sauce under yer patty this time.”

Nick thinks about the phone call a lot but doesn’t speak about it. As the days and weeks pass, he wonders if it’ll be the day Ellis shrugs out from under his hand. The day he doesn’t tell Nick that he’s going to hang out with his friends and just disappears. The day that he finds out that all those times hanging out were actually spent picking up girls. He _knows_ none of those things are going to happen, but he still waits for them anyway, because they’d already happened to him once in his life.

He feels anxiety on the nights Ellis tells him he’s tired and just wants to fall asleep on his chest or wrapped up in his arms. He tries to make sure the nights they do have sex or make love or whatever that it’s just as good if not better than the time before. He lets himself be taken whenever the young man feels in the mood for it, relishes that more often than not his lover wants Nick to be in control. He’s relieved each and every time Ellis cries out for him in orgasm, proud every time he can wring two out of the quaking body, aroused whenever the man beneath him begs for it.

And so, months pass and for the most part nothing changes. What does change is how frequently they get visitors, and not only Annalyn or the amazingly-stupid-duo. No, Coach likes to stop over all the time with his new wife, curvy and pretty and perfect for him. She laughs warm and loud, just like he does, and instantly feels at home in their kitchen whenever they come for dinner.

Rochelle also visits them, just as she promised. She stays for a few days in one of their guest rooms, and there’s one day where the four of them just spend the hours together in the living room, drinking and eating and relearning each other without the threat of death just outside the door. Ultimately, she has to leave but she’s constantly in contact through e-mail and text. Nick finds that even he gets a daily message from her, but he doesn’t admit aloud how pleased he is by it.

Things are good. Things are still easy. Things are better than he’d ever thought he’d have. So, the nagging feeling—the one that tells him something is wrong, that something is going to happen and displace everything they’d built, that something is _missing_ —is ridiculous and fucking _immature_.

And yet, still, he can’t get rid of it.

He’s sitting at their kitchen table, mulling over it but pretending he’s doing the numbers for the garage. His glasses are low on his nose, though, and all his handwriting is blurring together because he’s staring through and beyond it. He doesn’t even hear Ellis until the clink of silverware has him turning.

His partner smiles at him. He’s standing only in his flannel pajama pants, loosely tied and hanging below his hipbones. He’s shirtless and sockless, hair a curly mess with an obvious indent from his gaming headphones. He holds up the knife he was using to spread mayo on some bread. “Want me’ta make y’one?”

Nick blinks at him, noting that the digital clock above the stovetop indicates that it is, indeed, lunchtime. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“Alrighty, which’ll it be today? Reckon I won’t be able’ta kiss ya anytime soon if y’pick tuna.”

The gambler chuckles. “We got any salami?”

“Yup,” Ellis affirms with a pop of his lips on the ‘p’ and then he’s turning back to gather the condiments he knows he’ll need to make the sandwich the way Nick prefers.

The northerner watches him, tracking the lines of his waist and back from behind. He admires the dimples just above his ass. He watches his shoulder blades move under his skin as he works. He stares at the back of his neck where the little curls lie against his tan skin.

He looks over all of this, he memorizes all of it, and for the first time in his life he thinks, fiercely and suddenly, that he wants this forever.

And just like that, the paranoid thoughts of _wrong_ and _missing_ take over again, surrounded by his own uncertain apprehension.

The next day they have off together Ellis wants to spend at home alone. They’d spent the last few with friends and his mother, so he’s all for the slow morning they end up having. His partner always likes when he makes him eggs, _sunny side up_ he calls them like the child he is, so that he can dip his toast into them. Nick likes it the same way, so he’s long since stopped teasing him about it.

After that he expects them to at least take a walk or something, but Ellis just pulls him to the couch and they alternate between television and movies until Nick’s hands wander from rubbing his mechanic’s feet to massaging the inside of those thighs he loves so much. He crowds in to take it further, pressing their mouths together and sucking in the scent of his lover. He’s stopped, though, by callused hands pushing at his shoulders.

“What?”

“Not today, okay?”

Nick blinks stupidly. He and Ellis always fuck multiple times on the weekends. It’s almost like they’re trying to break an unspoken record. “Not today?”

“…I juss wanna sit with ya.”

“…You can sit _on_ me,” the gambler says with a smirk, trying to alleviate the annoyance he can feel building at the base of his spine.

“ _Nick_.”

“Since when don’t you want to fuck on a Saturday?” he questions, managing to keep his voice level. He knows as he sits back he hasn’t managed to do the same with his expression.

“C’mon, it ain’t a big deal.”

“Explain to me why it isn’t a big deal.”

“We had sex yesterday, Nick.”

“Okay, so you’re sore? I don’t need to be inside you to get you off.”

“I just ain’t in the mood.”

The conman wasn’t buying it. He can’t recall a time he hasn’t been able to get his young lover in the mood with a look, a kiss, or heavy petting. He says as much.

“Damn, man. I just don’t wanna.”

Nick moves away from him, realizing with a guilty start how he’s coming across, unintentional but possessive and forceful nonetheless.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, running his hand through his hair, “I’m not trying to be an asshole. Just… we okay?”

Ellis apparently has something to feel guilty about, too, because he gets on his knees and puts his arms over Nick’s shoulders to press against him from behind. “Shit, we’re fine, Nick. It’s nothin’ like that, I… well, I gotta surprise for’ya an’ I ain’t too sure on the exact time it’s comin’.”

The gambler touches one of his wrists. “You got me something? A new suit?”

He feels the snort move some of his hair. “Like you’d ever let me do that withoutchyer say so.”

“If it’s a dog I might have to murder you.”

“Y’promised we could get one now that the shop’s practically runnin’ itself, I don’t care how drunk y’were when y’said it… but no, it ain’t the dog.”

Nick keeps guessing, letting each get more and more outlandish to lighten the mood. By the time the doorbell rings, Ellis is lying back on the couch, cheeks tear stained from the force of his laughter. The older man squeezes his leg and stands to answer it.

“If it ends up just being Keith with some hillbilly concert tickets or something, I’m kicking you out.”

“Uh huh,” Ellis says, trailing him, humor gone and replaced with anticipation.

But it isn’t Keith or a dog or any of his other guesses. It’s his stepmother, gray-streaked and eager, face crumpling when he opens the door.

“Mom?” He feels like his knees want to give out, but before they can, the woman shoves into his arms and he finds the strength to lock his joints in place. He holds her as tight as he can without hurting her, shoving his face into her hair. She smells like an airplane, but underneath that is the perfume he always remembers whenever he thinks about her.

She doesn’t want to let him go when they part, so she cups his face and stares at him, learning his new lines and scars. She’s got a few new lines of her own, but she’s still as beautiful as she’s ever been. Even more now that she’s there and alive in front of him.

“How?” he asks. “I searched all the databases for you.”

“I opted out,” she tells him, a bit shamefully. “I didn’t want your father to find me.”

Nick swallows. “He’s dead.”

The news doesn’t upset or relieve her, she just nods. “I looked for you, too, but your name didn’t come up until last month.”

The former conman wonders if it has something to do with his stint in jail. He wonders even more if it has to do with the fact that they no longer share a last name and nobody was going to look deeper into their connection.

“The number I called was to some auto shop,” she continues. “And Ellis?” His mother peeks around him to smile at his partner. “…answered and bought me the plane ticket immediately. So, we have him to thank.”

Nick keeps ahold of her fingers but turns to look at his lover, stunned and _grateful_.

He smiles sheepishly, having gone a bit pink. “Naw, y’would’ve found’im without me. I juss wanted’ta make it a surprise. Knew he was worryin’ after you all this time.”

“ _That_ ,” his mother drawls, smirking when he looks back to her, “really is one hell of an accent.”

The gambler laughs and hugs her again. “You’ll get used to it. You’re gonna stay for a while, right?”

“Gonna stay as long as I’m welcome, bambino.”

“You can literally move into one of the guest rooms right now.”

She draws back, surprised. “Well,” she says, tone teasing and delighted, “that’s new. I suppose I have your husband to thank for that?”

“Boyfriend,” he corrects in a mutter, a bit lamely. He sidesteps and grabs up her bags, nodding her to head inside.

She does, right up to Ellis.

“Mom, Ellis. Ellis, this is my mother, Diana.”

“It’s a real pleasure’ta meetchya face’ta face, ma’am,” Ellis says, holding out his hand. He smiles the instant he knows she’s going to ignore it and he lets himself be drawn easily into a hug. Nick knows it’s tighter and more personal than his fellow northerner expects, but she rubs the mechanic’s back tenderly all the same. “So glad yer here.”

“So glad to be here, Ellis,” she murmurs. She steps back and grins at him. “Never thought I’d see it, but you really did a number on my boy, huh?”

He grins right back at her. “Don’t wanna brag, but he sure as hell used’ta be able’ta start an argument in’a empty room. He ain’t so grumpy no more.”

She laughs, charmed, and casts a look over at her son. “Nice catch here, Nicky. Very cute.”

“Yeah, he’s not bad,” he grumbles. “He’d be cuter if he got you a drink while I put these away.”

They spend the rest of the day eating, drinking, and catching up. Diana doesn’t want to be too far from him, and he doesn’t want her to be either. She tells them she went for the evac immediately, which saved her life since it turned out she wasn’t a carrier. Nick feels a little comfort in knowing they would’ve been kept separated for a long time even if they had known the other was alive.

They, in turn, tell her their own story of survival. She listens intently, calmly, like she always used to whenever Nick had been in trouble. She’d never been one to let anyone know more than she wanted them to, but Nick knows her better than anyone else, so he can see the little uncomfortable movements she makes whenever they mention their near-death experiences.

When they finish telling her about the camp and moving in together, she relaxes and is all smiles again. “And then you two fell in love.”

_You’re not wrong_ , he thinks, abrupt and jarring.

He hides in his hand to save face. “Look, I’ve already got the kid to make me miserable, could you just give me a day to process that you’re alive before the motherly teasing starts up again?”

“It’s motherly _affection_ ,” she corrects. “And no, I like Ellis too much not to tease you.”

“I can’t take both our mothers doing it.”

Diana jumps on that. “Your mother should come over tomorrow. I want to meet her.”

“Really?” Ellis asks. “Sure, I reckon that’ll be fine. We usually spend Sundays with’er, anyway. She juss thought you’d want more time with Nick.”

Figures Annalyn had been in on it, too.

“I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, sweetheart,” she tells the younger man. “Nick and I have plenty of time. Invite her over for me, yeah?”

“Anythin’ you want, ma’am.”

“How about you call me Diana?”

“Careful, he’s southern, you might overload his brain with the informality,” Nick warns.

That night, he lies in bed and waits for his lover to join him. He listens as the hick washes his face and brushes his teeth. When the bathroom light clicks off and darkens their bedroom, he holds up the covers so Ellis can slip between them easily. He reaches his hand around his back and draws him close so they are face to face, so he can run his fingers through his curls.

“Thank you,” Nick tells him, feeling as fond as he’s ever felt.

His southerner smiles. “Yer welcome… juss wish we’d found her sooner.”

“Shh,” the ex-conman admonishes. “That doesn’t matter.”

Ellis doesn’t argue the point, just closes his eyes when Nick reaches up to touch the skin of his face. He accepts the kiss to his forehead with a pleased hum and burrows closer.

“She’s right, you know,” Nick murmurs.

“Hm?” His eyes are still closed, mouth starting to fall open because of the way the older man’s thumb is tracing the sharp line of his eyebrow.

He wonders if Ellis can feel the increased heartbeat in his touch. It’s not so bad to thud its way to him through the mattress, but maybe this close he can hear it. He doesn’t let it stop him.

“I love you,” he finally says. “Should’ve told you.”

Those blue eyes open and search Nick’s. Then, very gently, very _lovingly_ , Ellis touches his face. “I knew it, Nick. I love you, too.” He gives the older man a sweet kiss and then moves in close so he can tuck into his chest and tangle their legs. So they can sleep like the day hadn’t changed everything for them.

And he goes to sleep no longer thinking that something is _wrong_ or that the floor’s going to drop out from beneath him. _Missing_ , though… _something missing_ is the last thing he thinks before he drifts off.

As it happens, a week later, he figures it out because of his mother.

She takes to Savannah like a second home, though that might be because Nick’s there. She takes to Ellis like he’s her second son, too, and maybe she does end up thinking of him that way. And Annalyn? She practically falls in love with the woman, asking after her as often as she can until they’re going shopping or cooking or ‘giving the boys some alone time.’

It’s one day when they’re sitting at dinner, laughing and drinking, that Diana spells it out for him.

“I missed having family dinners,” she says, effortlessly. The two southerners agree with her just as easily.

And Nick’s the only one left in a stupor as they finish their meals and stories. Because that answers it for him. That’s when he gets exactly what the _something missing_ is.

The next day, he makes sure Ellis doesn’t mind if he and Diana go out and spend some time together. His lover looks at him like he’s insane for having asked and reassures him he’s got plans with the guys anyway. They agree on returning in time for dinner and then go their separate ways.

He tries not to imagine Ellis and his dumbass friends attempting to jump their trucks over the biggest hazards they can find, but it’s a hard thing now that he knows them personally. He just hopes his lover doesn’t call him from the hospital in a full body cast. Not only would he be royally pissed, but it would take the wind right out of his sails.

As it is, he’s finding this idea of his worse and worse the longer it takes him and his mother to find a store they both find suitable. It takes them a good two hours to find an expensive, but trustworthy place. Once inside, though, it doesn’t take him long at all to find what he wants.

“This is the one you want, sir? There aren’t any others you’d like to look at?” the jeweler asks him. He’s holding up the ring, simple and sterling silver with a band of brushed black around its center. It looks so much like a racing stripe, so much like _Ellis_ , that no, Nick doesn’t have to look at any others. Once again, he wants to laugh at how _easy_ this all is.

The jeweler tells him the inscription will take two weeks and that the shop would call when it was finished. That’s fine, it gives Nick time to sweat out his decision. To figure out how the hell he’s going to do this all over again. To do it right because it matters this time.

Needless to say, the ring ends up hidden in their extra, unoccupied room for a week after he gets it because he doesn’t figure it out.

Finally, fed up, Diana, who is working on finding her own place nearby, retrieves the little box and throws it against his chest when Ellis gets up to use the bathroom. She then announces she’ll be spending the rest of the day and night at Annalyn’s.

“When I get back tomorrow morning,” she threatens, “I want to see a ring on him.”

And that’s that. She leaves before Ellis can even rejoin them. When he does, he laughs at the abruptness of her departure, but settles quickly back into the show they’d been watching. Both of them are only half paying attention, anyway. The mechanic is looking over the manual for a motorcycle he wants on his laptop and Nick is staring at an imaginary spot on the wall, his hand wedged between the couch cushions and tightened around a small, black box.

After a bit the smaller man yawns and sets his computer aside. He rises with a stretch, shirt hiking up his stomach. When he’s done he turns to Nick. “Want somethin’ta drink? Rum an’ coke? Whiskey?”

“I’m fine,” Nick says without thinking. A moment later, when his brain processes that response, he recognizes it as the wrong one.

“What’s goin’ on?” Ellis asks, stepping to him. “Yer ma juss up an’ runs outta here an’ yer turnin’ down drinks.”

“It’s nothing,” he says instinctively. “Changed my mind. Rum and coke is good.”

The younger man crosses his arms and looks him over. He smirks when he notices where his wrist is buried. “Whatchya got there?”

“…If I promise to get you that dog will you let this go?”

“We both know I’m gettin’ that dog anyway. What’re y’hidin’?”

Nick licks his lips. “You’re really going to regret making me show you.”

“Think the only thing I’ll regret is if y’pull a Jockey outta there or somethin’.”

“Ellis.”

“ _Nick_.”

“Okay, fine,” he acquiesces. He wonders if he should drop to a knee and then decides that no, he shouldn’t. He doesn’t want any of this to be the same way it had before. He doesn’t want to make it a show. He doesn’t _need_ to make it a show with Ellis. He just needs it to be their moment. So, he tugs on the southerner’s forearm until he sits back down.

And then, right there in their house, he withdraws the box, pops the top open, and sets it gently in Ellis’ upturned hand.

His lover stares at it for a good fifteen seconds before he breaks out in laughter.

Nick stares at him, unable to comprehend what could possibly be so funny in that pretty head of his.

The younger man recollects himself and takes a closer look at the band. “…M’sorry. This is the _coolest_ ring I’ve ever seen.”

The gambler nods numbly and then says, just as numbly: “It looked like you.”

“Kinda does, doesn’t it?” Ellis asks. His hand is starting to shake now, but before the trembling gets too bad, he puts the box back into Nick’s palm. “Hang on a sec, okay?”

He doesn’t actually give the northerner the choice with how quickly he moves. He just about trips on the coffee table as he hurries down the hall to disappear into the same damn spare room Nick had hidden his ring. He hears the sound of metal clasps releasing and then the thrum of some bass strings as they’re accidentally brushed. Then Ellis is rushing back to sit beside him.

The first thing he does is take his ring back from Nick. The second thing he does is replace it with his own box.

There’s a gold ring glinting up at Nick from inside it. Its décor is mostly smooth save for the outward edges which are lined with a wheat-style design. It’s ornamental and masculine, and Nick’s more than a little impressed by it. And he’s more than a little relieved by it.

Getting the joke now, he laughs, too.

Ellis quiets first, depositing the box on the table in front of them so he can hold the ring between his fingertips for a closer look. “Ha! Lookit that. Y’engraved the day we met, too.”

“…Mostly a shitty day, but I guess it all worked out.”

The hick returns his shaky smile and then lets out a big rush of air. “Man, y’don’t know how long I been sittin’ on that. I didn’t know how’ta ask. Didn’t know if you’d even wanna marry me after everythin’y’ve been through.”

The gambler takes his hand and slips the ring in place in lieu of an answer. He lets Ellis repeat the action with his own hand.

“…So,” Ellis drawls. “Y’gonna ask me?”

Nick meets his eye. He’d wanted this to be different, he remembers. It already is, but he can think of one other surefire way to guarantee it.

“How about _you_ ask _me_?”


End file.
